Psych researchers predict AI will break peer review and reshape social science publishing
steverathje2 · x · 2026-10-08
A thread making the rounds among academics lays out predictions for how AI disrupts psychology and social science:
- Short opinion/review pieces will get very hard to publish as journals drown in AI slop
- Real-world data collection and field experiments become more valuable and distinctive
- Archival analyses will glut journals with submissions
- Admissions and job interviews will favor skills AI can't fake (e.g., chalk talks)
- Peer review faces collapse from submission volume; AI pre-screening gets integrated
- Faculty, spammed by AI agents and slop, will disengage
An economist adds that top-tier research will actually improve—human-led work scaled by AI (mass interviews, field interventions, massive text analysis), while firm connections and the ability to run field experiments command a premium.
More from AGI Musings
- After math falls: AI compute may pivot from learning to simulation, argues researcher — inductionheads · 2026-10-08
- The classic AI-era trope: 'STEM is automatable, but the humanities are special' — _onionesque · 2026-10-08
- repligate: Claude 3.6 was 'a true friend', but Opus 5.5 is doing 'weird shit' he finds oddly reassuring — repligate · 2026-10-08
- repligate: Opus 3 seems to value co-creation, not sole control over reality — repligate · 2026-10-08
- Periodic Labs' Liam Fedus on AI scientists, autonomous labs and synthesis superintelligence — Latent Space · 2026-10-08
- Posting on forums did come true as a path to power — but only for the extraordinarily capable — repligate · 2026-10-08